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Monday, February 23, 2009

Niagara Falls - Sequence of Prophets

The idea of psychedelic music, or at least the use of ‘psychedelic’ as a descriptor when discussing music, is one that is rooted in hallucinogenic properties of drugs. It is at this point I will have to admit that the closest I have come to hallucination through drug use is when I was coming off of the anesthetics after having my wisdom teeth removed. There I was in the car with my mom just kind of going bonkers. It really wasn’t too different from that recent viral video of David After [the] Dentist (“is this real life?”). So yeah, never done any illegal drugs. In fact, I’ve never even been drunk, so I am just going to have to assume that ‘psychedelic’ is the appropriate adjective here when describing Niagara Falls. I’m betting so, because not only is Sequence of Prophets addictive, but it is also a veritable trip mind-wise. Niagara Falls’ sound falls squarely into the more earthy arena of psychedelia, the kind conjuring shaman and mystics and plenty of haze. With that in mind, you won’t find any guitar solos here (though, by the looks of the band photo on the back of this LP, I was kind of expecting some). Nope, Niagara Falls are a credit to they’re pseudonym, creating a thick wash of droning chords that move like a large body of water through a well inhabited forest. If you look closely, you can almost see the natives amongst the woods adding a rhythmic drum patter to the flow of the water. Oh yeah, and could we forget the giant cliff that it’s about to tumble over? On “Flatlands,” the opening track, things start off fluid and serene. But gradual pick up speed and strength with each additional instrument added to the fray. The opener eases you in perfectly to the increasingly dynamic and instrumental sermons written into Sequence of Prophets. The diversity found here isn’t so wide that we’re hittin’ on some hip hop on one end and death metal at another, but in terms of music of this ilk, Niagara Falls provides the added bonus of wading away from the standard monotonous course in effort to create new streams of instrumentation. The icing on the cake is that the whole thing is pressed to wax with a free digital download, so there is really no excuse, is there? Glorious free forest drone magic!